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PAIN AND SYMPATHY 






Pain and Sympathy 


BY THE RIGHT REVEREND 

JOHN NEWTON McCORMICK, D.D. 

Bishop Coadjutor of Western Michigan 


LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

91 and 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

I907 


Copyright, 1907, by 
John Newton McCormick 


U& HAfiYof C 0 NQRE 3 S 
Two Copies Received 



P 




The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 







IN LOVING MEMORY OF 
MY DAUGHTERS, 
DOROTHY AND NORA 












PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


“ Is it nothing to you , all ye that pass by ? 
behold , and see if there be any sorrow like unto 
my sorrow , which is done unto me , wherewith 
the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of His 
fierce angerLamentations 1: 12. 


M ANY of us recognize these words 
as applied to the Divine Tragedy 
of Calvary. We have heard them put 
into the lips of the Man of Sorrows, 
as spoken by Him in plaintive appeal 
to the hostile or curiosity-seeking 
crowds about the cross. We must 
remember that they have this applica¬ 
tion only by suggestion, and by a cer¬ 
tain figurative fitness. They come 
from one of the finest remains of 
Hebrew poetry to be found in the Old 
Testament literature. They are a 
part of one of the five elegiac poems 
[ 1 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

which constitute the Book of Lamenta¬ 
tions, and they represent, as do all of 
these poems, the downfall of Jerusalem, 
when captured by the Chaldeans in 
the year 588 b.c. But, indeed, is 
there not, after all, an inscrutable con¬ 
nection, more vital than we know, 
between the suffering of Him who 
wept over Jerusalem, and the strange, 
sad history and destiny of the city 
over which He wept? The Hebrew 
poet personifies the city, sitting like a 
widow by the wayside, and crying 
from the dust of her desolation, a veri¬ 
table Mater Dolorosa among the cities 
of the earth: “Is it nothing to you, all 
ye that pass by? behold, and see if 
there be any sorrow like unto my 
sorrow.” 

Does it not sometimes seem as 
though these words might be spoken 
by the very planet upon which we 
[ 2 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

live ? As though earth itself were ask¬ 
ing of the orbs that move about it, 
intruding its cry of pain into the 
music of the spheres: “Is it nothing 
to you, all ye that pass by? behold, 
and see if there be any sorrow like unto 
my sorrow.” There are some land¬ 
scapes which look like broken hearts. 
The face of nature appears sad and 
painful, or else cruel and threatening, 
— a Niobe of grief or a Medusa of 
horror. We recall that terrible in¬ 
dictment of nature, so often quoted, 
in which the famous English scientist 
enumerates the apparent cruelties and 
tragedies of the physical and animal 
world. We think of the riot of the 
jungle, the reign of terror among ani¬ 
mals, the horror of starvation and the 
shadow of death. And while the suf¬ 
fering of animals, to take this single 
example, has, no doubt, been greatly 
[3] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


exaggerated, — for most naturalists 
hold that in the animal creation happi¬ 
ness vastly predominates over pain, — 
yet we cannot forget that such suffer¬ 
ing does exist, not only among the wild 
beasts of the forest and the jungle, but 
among the domestic pets in our own 
homes. 

But, of course, what imparts in¬ 
terest to this spectacle of nature’s pain 
is the feeling that it is, in some way, 
our pain; we cannot say: 

“Foul be the world or fair , 

More or less , — can I care ? 

’Tis the world the same , 

For my praise or blame” 

We cannot pass the Weldschmerz by 
unheeded, because we know that 
nature but represents ourselves: that 
she and her lesser children, the brute 
creation, are inexorably bound to¬ 
gether with the feeling and the fate of 
[ 4 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

her best and latest born, man. The 
truth is that nature reflects all moods, 
all temperaments, all phases of life- 
fact. The characteristics of human 
nature find their counterparts among 
the animals, the wisdom of the ser¬ 
pent, the harmlessness of the dove, 
the cunning of the fox, the industry of 
the ant, the courage of the lion, the 
ferocity of the tiger, the fidelity of 
the dog, the nobility of the horse. So 
the very face of the earth shows smiles 
and tears, cruelty and kindness, growth 
and decay, life and death. Now is 
nature a red-armed Amazon of battle: 
anon she is alma mater , kind, propi¬ 
tious, beneficent. The earth is green, 
fertile, vibrant, and joyous; the sun 
smiles, flowers bloom, the song of the 
turtle-dove is heard in the land, and 
we shout aloud in our glee. Again, 
the leaves fade and fall, earth, sky and 
[ 5 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


sea grow dark, and it is the winter of 
our discontent. So close are these 
bonds, that when we discern that 
among the dominant notes of nature, 
persistent ever, is the note of pain, our 
hearts throb in sad accord. We recall 
those primeval words of Holy Scrip¬ 
ture, the marriage tie of sinful man 
and smitten earth, — “ Cursed is the 
ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt 
thou eat of it all the days of thy life: 
Thorns also, and thistles shall it bring 
forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the 
herb of the field. In the sweat of thy 
face shalt thou eat bread, till thou 
return unto the ground; for out of it 
wast thou taken: for dust thou art, 
and unto dust shalt thou return.” We 
occupy the standpoint of the Christian 
Apostle, sharing his inspired insight 
into the mystery of being as he beheld 
the whole creation in bondage await- 
[ 6 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

ing its enfranchisement, groaning and 
travailing in pain and sorrow. We 
recall, with a thrill of hope, that the 
Gospel of redemption is sent not only 
to man, but “to every creature.” 
Meanwhile we think that since the 
time when the morning stars sang to¬ 
gether and all the sons of God shouted 
for joy, at least one voice in that 
majestic minstrelsy has changed its 
paean for a dirge, — its jubilate for a 
miserere , — and we seem to hear the 
cry of the earth, the lost world, the 
hundredth sheep in the wilderness of 
space, crying to the ninety and nine 
shining spheres and splendid suns, “Is 
it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? 
behold, and see if there be any sorrow 
like unto my sorrow.” 

And when we come, O my brothers, 
to listen to one another, to catch and 
to interpret the words that fall from 
[ 7 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


our own lips, is it not as though this 
very cry were the chorus of humanity, 
the note of the world? We hear it 
down the generations from the earliest 
dawn of history, a rift within the lute 
of the Golden Age; we hear each gen¬ 
eration repeat it, now with a scream 
of anguish, now with a whisper of de¬ 
spair; we hear it from the lips of men 
and women and little children, each 
heart knowing its own bitterness, each 
age and each individual, with a self¬ 
absorption almost pardonable, believ¬ 
ing its burden to be the heaviest, its 
wound to be the worst, “Is there, is 
there any sorrow like unto my sorrow ?” 
The world grows old, grows better, 
indeed; changes succeed each other in 
human history, like the geological 
epochs in the cooling of the earth’s 
crust; the very configuration of society 
is altered, 


[ 8 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


“ The captains and the Icings depart ” 
the people rise, empire marches west¬ 
ward, and standards change, the 
first is last and the last first, the 
old is new again, sweet is bitter 
and bitter is sweet, and yet — pain 
persists. Is it our own age ? Do 
we tell ourselves in proud congratula¬ 
tion of the gains in material and social 
well-being, the glories of blood-won 
civil and religious liberty, the spread 
of education, the subjugation of na¬ 
ture? Or, better, do we think of the 
many alleviations of pain, the building 
of hospitals, the use of anaesthetics, the 
care for the aged, the poor, the crippled 
and infirm, the perception of solidarity, 
the quickening of interest, altruism, 
sympathy? All these are blessed, and 
yet men suffer. Atra cur a, the sombre 
anxiety which the Roman poet sung, 
still darkens the brows of men. The 
[ 9 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

discontent of the poor, the ennui of the 
rich, the injustice of industrial con¬ 
ditions, the ever sharper accentuation 
of contrasts, the high pressure of 
modern living, the deliberate and often 
morbid cultivation of the emotions 
through literature and art, all the in¬ 
tensity, exaggeration, restlessness, ner¬ 
vousness, that characterize our age 
emphasize with new insistence the 
world-old griefs and pangs of human 
life. There is a high degree of mental 
suffering to-day: an acuteness of tor¬ 
ture, resulting from the worry, anxiety, 
and anguish of a finely organized brain 
and nervous system, such as perhaps 
no former generation has known. 
Think of the suffering from “nerves,” 
the manifold and hydra-headed forms 
of neurasthenia, culminating so often 
in the black horrors of madness and 
suicide. The higher the life, the keener 
[ 10 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

is the sense of pain. The savage can 
bear physical torture without shrink¬ 
ing ; the dog or the horse does not suffer 
as does the child; the child does not 
suffer as the man. It is Jerusalem, 
the city of the Great King, the chosen 
of the Lord, that cries out in her 
anguish, distinguished for suffering 
among all the nations of the world. It 
is the Mother of the Christ who is the 
Mother of sorrows. It is the Son of 
Man Himself, who, because of His 
perfect manhood, His exquisitely sen¬ 
sitive human body and soul, penetrates 
most deeply the valley of the shadow 
of death. And so, despite all allevia¬ 
tions, pain persists, and the twentieth 
century cries back to the first, “ Be¬ 
hold, and see if there be any sorrow 
like unto my sorrow.” 

But what does it mean, this cry on 
your lips and on mine? 

[ 11 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


It must mean, among other things, 
this: That there is sorrow in other 
hearts as well as in our own. Pain is 
fearfully apt to make us selfish; to 
make us feel that there is no sorrow 
like our sorrow. We need to be re¬ 
minded that pain is the common lot. 
This does not, indeed, make it the less 
easy to bear. 

“ That loss is common would not make 
My own less bitter , rather more; 

Too common! Never morning wore 
To evening but some heart did. break." 

It does not mean that there are not 
degrees of pain, for there must be de¬ 
grees of suffering here and hereafter; 
but it does mean that none of us dare 
expect exemption. And it means also 
that there is a kind of rounding and 
completing of human nature and of 
human experience which is forever 
wanting in an unshadowed life. Men 
[ 12 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

are great according to their sorrows 
and the way they bear them. Pain 
puts the finishing touches. The stroke 
of the sword is the accolade of knight¬ 
hood. The cross is crowned. For 
the man who craves perfection, pain 
must be a preference. Surely we know 
enough to feel in our hearts an echo 
of the truth expressed by the great 
English poet when he tells us, in that 
noblest poem of the last century, 

“ I hold it truth , whatever befall , 

I feel it when I sorrow most; 

9 Tis better to have loved and lost , 
Than never to have loved at all. 9 9 

With all the deep experiences of life, 
suffering is involved. Yet these ex¬ 
periences are to be desired, even though 
they end, or seem to end, in grief and 
loss. The cup of life is to be drained, 
not sipped. Man aspires to know, 
to feel, to do, to be, though knowledge, 
[ 13 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


feeling, action, being, cost and hurt. 
Even without our craving, or our 
choosing, pain will come. And we 
can see, even we, with eyes beclouded, 
can see the shallowness of painless 
lives. Who does not know how charac¬ 
ter is ripened by sorrow? Who has 
not realized that the dust and ashes of 
disappointment, bereavement, agony, 
are really the nectar and ambrosia of 
the soul? But always let us remem¬ 
ber, lest we should fancy ourselves 
victimized and persecuted, that other 
men and women are suffering too; that 
pain is catholic and cosmopolitan. We 
feel like challenging the world with 
our sorrow; was there ever — see, ex¬ 
amine, weigh well the aggravation — 
was there ever sorrow like unto our sor¬ 
row? Let us rest assured that there 
has been, time and again, and will be 
as long as hearts are made and hearts 
[ 14 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

are broken, some type of pain, just as 
bitter as that which burns within our 
breast. There are other martyrdoms 
than ours. There are tragedies, catas¬ 
trophes, heroisms, endurances in other 
lives beside our own. The arrow that 
pierces our bosoms is already rusted 
with the blood of unnumbered wounds. 
Jerusalem is not alone in her grief 
among the cities of the earth. 

Again this cry of the heart must 
mean to us a warning: it must bid us 
beware lest pain make us pessimists. 
It seemed to this Hebrew poet of the 
Captivity that some anger of the Lord, 
some fierce wrath of Divine vengeance, 
pitiless, inexorable, were crushing Jeru¬ 
salem into the dust and destroying 
her. Indeed, there is here, as in all 
real literature, a strain of sadness, a 
sort of semi-pessimism as old as the 
immemorial East whence it sprung, 
[ 15 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

and where it still finds its most con¬ 
genial home, a strain which, among 
the Hebrews, reaches its climax in the 
Book of Job, in the plaintive, almost 
querulous wail, so often repeated by 
the life-sick in every age: “I loathe it, 
I would not live alway: let me alone, 
for my days are vanity.” This is the 
cry which inspires pessimism in the 
philosophy and in the poetry of ancient 
and modern times, speaking from the 
pages of the latest English, French, 
Italian and German literature, as from 
the pages of the Greek, the Roman, 
the Arabian, and the Persian. Life is 
essentially wretched; this is the worst 
of worlds; laughter is but a moment’s 
respite from all-prevailing pain; we 
can but struggle, hopelessly enough, to 
make the best of a situation radically 
wrong. If this be a fad, a cult, a 
dilettantism, an artificiality, it is be- 
[ 16 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

neath the thought or the notice of 
serious men; if it be the cry of an 
anguished soul reaching out through 
this bewildering world into the abyss 
of the infinite, then it is worthy of our 
pity and of our help. For we all know 
what it is to have our dark hours, when 
the clouds are heavy, when vast waves 
of sadness come surging toward us, 
when not only doubt, discouragement, 
distaste, and disgust, but even despair 
itself, are dangerously near, waiting 
but a moment’s madness to invade 
and to engulf body and brain and soul. 
We dare not give way; we dare not for 
an instant be off our guard; we dare 
not allow pain to put out our eyes for 
the light, to poison and destroy us. 
Pain must be to us remedial, educative, 
Divine. It must make us heroic, 
strong, faithful, enduring. It must 
strengthen, not loosen our hold on the 
[ 17 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


eternal truth; it must clarify for us, 
not darken, the Beatific vision. Our 
so-called “trials” are trials indeed; 
they show what manner of men we 
are, and they determine what manner 
of men we are to be. A great sorrow 
either makes us or mars us. It brings 
us humility, contrition, tenderness, de¬ 
votion; or it brings recklessness, re¬ 
belliousness, morbidness, apostasy. 
Whenever suffering comes to us, we 
are weighed in the balances, and we 
must look well to ourselves lest the 
beam incline toward the left hand in¬ 
stead of toward the right hand, toward 
a horror of great darkness instead of 
toward the dayspring from on high. 
We must learn to see and to study the 
compensation and the education. For 
example, if it be bodily pain, that 
chronic invalidism which has sorely 
beset and confounded so many lives, 
[ 18 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

we may recall the fine saying that 
“delicate souls seem more at their 
ease in delicate bodies.” If it be 
mental or spiritual pain, we may reflect 
that ennoblement, enfranchisement, 
self-mastery, magnanimity, should 
come therewith, superb flowers blos¬ 
soming from drops of blood. We must 
learn to take the note not of a Heine, 
a Byron, a Schopenhauer, but of a 
Tennyson, a Browning, a Leibnitz. 
Think, too, of the educative intention 
of suffering. Lifetime is schooltime. 
God has a meaning in everything, 
and pain is above other things direc¬ 
tive and disciplinary, and above all 
other things instructive and informing. 
There is a Divine science and system 
of pedagogics embracing the universe, 
and surrounding and enfolding from 
first to last every created being. The 
Head-Master would not have us miss 
[ 19 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


one lesson of pain, lessons learned, 
though they be, literally by heart, by 
the heart’s beating and the heart’s 
blood. Here is a man whose life is 
becoming shallow, frivolous, unreal. 
Suddenly a great sorrow falls across 
his path: he shudders, staggers, is 
blinded and broken: yet is it but 
God’s mercy to deepen and enrich his 
life, to teach him a true perspective, 
to bring him back to the undergirding 
realities. There is in every sorrow a 
lesson. Sometimes he who runs may 
read. Sometimes it is a secret known 
only to teacher and scholar, to God 
and the man. Sometimes, for a while, 
it is known to God alone. But the 
question must ever be, what does this 
mean ? What page in the book of 
life is herein opened for my learning? 
We have gained a step or two on the 
right road when we have discovered 
[ 20 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


that pain in its results upon our lives 
is never accidental, but is always 
Providential; never meaningless, but 
always educational and intentional. 

Pain is, indeed, a mystery; but it may 
be regarded from one point of view 
as a mystery in the theological sense, 
as the Holy Trinity is a mystery and as 
the Holy Incarnation is a mystery; a 
mystery, that is to say, which is in no 
sense irrational and which is perfectly 
reconcilable with God’s love and God’s 
law. And, so far as mystery is con¬ 
sidered in its popular meaning, we 
must reflect how crass and obvious 
and uninteresting our life would be 
were there no place in it for mystery, 
for admiration, wonder and awe. The 
glamour would be gone and much of 
the glory would go with it. Half of 
the zest of life lies in following, through 
twilight and shadow, the gleam. Thus, 
[ 21 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


though pain is a labyrinth, the hand 
of God holds the clue and we follow 
as He leads. But lest, despite our 
better moments and our better selves, 
pessimism should at last overwhelm 
us, we have the privilege of remember¬ 
ing that storm and stress, even in lives 
most sorely beset, do not last forever. 
In the most tumultuous lives there are 
God-sent moments of calm and hope 
and chastened content, opportunities 
for recovered equipoise — interludes of 
insight and understanding. Lest we 
should perish utterly, there come times 
when 

“ The eye sinks inward and the heart lies plain , 
And what we mean we say , and what we would 
we know , 

A man becomes aware of his life’s flow y 
And hears its winding murmur; and he sees 
The meadows where it glides , the sun , the 
breeze , 

And there arrives a lull in the hot race 
[ 22 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

Wherein he doth for ever chase 
That flying and elusive shadow , rest. 

An air of coolness plays upon his face , 

And an unwonted calm pervades his breast , 
And then he thinks he knows 
The hills where his life rose 
And the sea where it goes 

Nor can we forget, my brothers, that 
this cry is not only a challenge, a 
plaint, and a warning, but that it is 
also a plea for sympathy. “Is it 
nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” 
Ah! The apparent contrasts of life! 
This planet struck and scorched with 
sin and suffering, its Edens overgrown 
with thorns, its creatures become 
beasts of prey, its Perfect Man hang¬ 
ing in agony upon a Cross: and those 
other worlds, lustrous, calm, splendid, 
whirling yonder through the depths 
of space. The half of a continent 
plague or famine-smitten, and other 
lands aglow with pride and pomp and 
[ 23 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


feasting. The hospital, with its moan¬ 
ing sufferers, its agony, its death- 
rattle, and the crowd that laughs by its 
doors. A soul, singled out and sore 
stricken, and the chattering multitude 
that sweeps heedlessly along. O, men 
and women, brothers, sisters, nurtured 
by the milk of human kindness, sharers 
of a common lot, is it nothing to you ? 
To you, who at any moment may be 
swung from pole to pole, from light to 
darkness, the laugh suspended on your 
open lips to issue in a cry, the smile 
arrested to be frozen into horror: is it 
nothing to you, all ye that pass by? 
Thank God! It is already something: 
by and by it will be everything. The 
by-passer has become the by-stander, 
and the by-stander the sympathizer. 
Since Jerusalem sat solitary among 
the nations, since the Son of Man 
was cursed upon the Cross, and men 
[ 24 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

laughed and mocked even on that 
awful Place of a Skull, sympathy has 
come! Men name it altruism; they 
may call it what they please, they may 
label it and its kindred virtues accord¬ 
ing to the latest scientific classifications. 
We know it to be Christianity; the 
charity of Christ, the Christ-born 
charity of all good Christian men. In 
the sympathy of the Saviour of man¬ 
kind lies the secret and the source of 
all sympathy. From that fountain 
flows forth the ever rising tide of the 
brotherhood of man, the surging glory 
of the fatherhood of God. Because 
of Christ and Christly men, men are 
caring more and more. Strike here 
with calamity, or pestilence and the 
nerves vibrate yonder, on the other 
side of the earth, and men there weep 
and pray and give and help. The 
priest and the Levite no longer pass 
[ 25 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

by on the other side. Priest, Levite 
and Samaritan, sinking all distinctions, 
are one in the relief of the wounded 
and the oppressed, all differences for¬ 
gotten in a brotherhood of mercy. 
When we suffer, we know that many 
others are suffering with us. And, 
after all, there is much blessedness 
just here. Who can estimate in gold 
or gems the worth of loving sympathy, 
the uncommercial value of the pressure 
of a friend’s hand ? Here we also 
learn the fruitful lesson that our own 
suffering should fill our hearts with 
sympathy for others. To-day we sit 
in dust and ashes and our friends pass 
by: to-morrow their turn may come, 
and we, arisen and refreshed, may be 
called upon to behold their spectacle 
of pain. But we cannot forget the 
dreadful time when we sat among 
the potsherds, and so their grief is ours 
[ 26 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


and we learn to weep with those that 
weep. 

“ I have been down with sorrow in the deep , 
Where never ray of light can pierce the gloom , 
Where is no respite , and where falls no sleep — 
Where is Life's tomb. 

“ There lie the buried hopes of all the years , 
Lost lives , and broken hearts and loves laid 
low; 

There falls a long monotony of tears — 

Falls swift and slow. 

“/ have been long with sorrow ... If the day 
Should ever dawn when I am free from pain 
And love lead gently back to life again , 

Can I forget that I have passed this way ? ” 

Unhappy, indeed, are they whose 
hearts are hardened by adversity, and 
the fountain of whose tears is dried up. 
Inhuman, indeed, and oh, utterly un¬ 
christian is the man who does not share 
with others the consolations that have 
refreshed his own soul. Let us never 
[ 27 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

forget, my brothers in sorrow, the 
words of the Holy Apostle: “Blessed 
be God, even the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies 
and the God of all comfort; Who com- 
forteth us all in all our tribulation, 
that we also may be able to comfort 
them which are in any trouble, by the 
comfort wherewith we ourselves are 
comforted of God.” 

Thus are we led also to that most 
consummate compensation, pain’s only 
panacea — the sympathy of the Lord 
of life and death, Who wept over 
Jerusalem in its shadow of deepening 
gloom, Who in His own self was a man 
of sorrows and acquainted with grief. 
Who was Himself, the Captain of our 
Salvation, made perfect through suffer¬ 
ings. If we here touch religion at its 
most mystical point, the experience 
of all Christians testifies that we touch 
[ 28 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


it at its most real point. Though our 
grief should be as nothing to all others, 
though the whole creation should pass 
us by, we know that He lingers, looks 
and loves. “The Lord is nigh unto 
them that are of a broken heart.” 
When all self-sufficiency is gone from 
us, when we realize our inadequacy, 
when at the very base of being, the self, 
and all that belongs to the life of self, 
seems shattered and parted, then there 
is about us the suffusing sense of a 
Presence Divine, warm, vital, forceful. 
Then is He near us. 

“ Closer is He than breathing , 
Nearer than hands or feet.” 

In those small, yet surely real, Geth- 
semanes of our lives, when we lie 
upon the tear-wet ground, prostrate yet 
prayerful — He Who keepeth and Who 
loveth us does not slumber; whereas 
[ 29 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


an angel came to strengthen Him, He 
comes Himself to strengthen us. 

Perhaps we are now a little more 
ready for what is, I think, God’s final 
lesson, His most intimate secret, His 
most uplifting revelation: that pain is 
not punitive only, but remedial also, 
not of anger, but of love. The sting 
is always sin, the sting of death, the 
sting of life, the sting of pain. And 
sin is not of God. To the bewildered 
question, as one views the earth over¬ 
sown with evil, “Whence then hath 
it tares?” there is but one answer, 
“An enemy hath done this.” Yet 
God lives and rules, and in the universe 
of the living God all things work to¬ 
gether for good to them that love Him. 
There is nothing hostile which He can¬ 
not make helpful. Pain, interwoven 
as it is with sin, becomes in God’s 
hands a means of purification and re- 
[ 30 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 

demption. And the final outcome 
shall be good and glorious. Pain shall 
do its work here and hereafter, and 
that work is done under God’s laws 
and within the sway of the sceptre of 
love. The meaning of it and the issue 
of it are with Him. Something of that 
long-awaited consummation we can 
discern now and then, here and there. 
We read it in our Bibles; we see it 
through our tears; our deepest griefs 
are its most convincing prophets. The 
ransomed of the Lord returned unto 
Zion, and the walls of Jerusalem 
arose again with a shout and a song. 
We know that the world itself, await¬ 
ing its redemption, shall realize that 
redemption to the full; from the 
long birth-pangs of creation shall 
emerge the new heaven and the new 
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
Among the worshipping hosts before 
[ 31 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


the throne of God, St. John beheld not 
only the similitude of a man; but, 
among the living creatures chanting 
the Trisagion , he beheld the similitude 
of the lion, the eagle, the calf. And 
there, also before the throne, the ob¬ 
served of all the observers of the uni¬ 
verse, shall be man, through whose sin 
the whole creation fell, through whose 
redemption the whole creation is per¬ 
fected and glorified: man purified by 
the pain of man, man saved through 
the pain of God. Does that day seem 
distant, that perfection long postponed ? 
Well, in the meanwhile, a long while 
or a short while, as it may please God, 
painful or joyful, a little more or a 
little less, as it may please God, in 
the meanwhile let us learn, as other 
men have learned before us, as gen¬ 
erations yet unborn will learn when 
we have passed ahead, to suffer and be 
[ 32 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


strong. Let us learn to endure; to be 
patient; to await with confidence the 
end and the issue, tearful yet jubilant, 
suffering much, yet never doubting, 
never despairing. 

As we have seen, we must not miss 
the lessons which God would have 
us learn: it must not be with us as 
in the sad lines of the poet, — 

“As some most 'pure and lovely face, 

Seen in the thronged and hurrying street , 
Sheds o'er the world a sudden grace , 

A flying odor sweet , 

Then passing leaves the cheated sense 
Balked with a phantom excellence; 

“So in our souls the visions rise 
Of that fair life we never led; 

They flash a splendor past our eyes; 

We start , and they are fled. 

They pass and leave us with blank gaze , 
Resigned to our ignoble days." 

We must let the Angel of Pain tarry with 
us and teach us all his lessons so that 
[ 33 ] 


PAIN AND SYMPATHY 


we may never again ingloriously acqui¬ 
esce in the old selfish and ignoble life. 

Let us remember that great word 
of our blessed Lord to His smitten 
Apostle: “My grace is sufficient for 
thee.” God does not always alter the 
environment; He strengthens the in¬ 
dividual. The thorn remains, but 
grace is given. 

We must summon all our courage 
and all our resolution to see to these 
two things; — first, pain must open, 
not close our hearts. The cry, “Is it 
nothing to you?” must never fall, in 
Christendom, on heedless ears. Second, 
— every passing of the plowshare must 
leave our lives deeper and richer, so 
that when sorrows come we may bring 
forth thirty-, and when they come 
again sixty-, and when they return yet 
a third time, even an hundred-fold to 
the glory of God’s Holy Name. 

[ 34 ] 
































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